would be a pity if anything remained unclear between us. I gather that
you see no course for it but open war, that you refuse the road of
solution which my proposal about the Forbes estate opens out. Might I
ask why you are so unsympathetic to that idea, which would serve every
interest?"
"I am," I declared hotly, "neither a matchmaker, especially for
adventurers, nor a scheming politician, and on both grounds I decline
to have anything to do with you. Your insistence compels me to speak
with a plainness which I would rather have avoided, but you must blame
yourself. It's a far cry to Loch Awe, and a farther cry to the pardon
of the Black Colonel, but he thinks it might be contrived if he had
Marget Forbes and her property for a trump card. A pretty scheme, but
not one which my commission for King George instructs me to
countenance."
Now I, in turn, had gone aflame, despite all my resolve to the
contrary, but if I had spoken the name of Marget Forbes it was, I tried
to reflect, as if it had no intimate meaning for me. That would have
been to blunder doubly, because it would show me personally, nay,
intimately, interested.
The Black Colonel had been silent, and, when I ceased talking, I
noticed a strained, even a queer, look in his eye. Was he counting up
some element of the game which, thus far, was unknown to me? For when
the minds of men rub fiercely against each other, as ours had been
doing, they speak quicker than words. A kind of communication springs
up, vague of detail, but unfailing in its general import.
I was not surprised, therefore, when the Black Colonel put his hand
within his coat and drew a paper from a pocket there. But I was
surprised when he said, "I have something here which I owe to the
favour of my friends in the south, and you will find that it bears upon
our conversation." He unfolded the paper slowly, I seeing, as he did
so, that it was an official paper, and then he handed it to me.
It was not easy to read, in the dim light of the Colonel's Bed, thanks
to its crabbed orthography and its long formal phrasing, but gradually
I made out its wording to be this:
"Greetings:
"Whereas, trusty and well-beloved councillors advise it in the interest
of our cause in the Scottish Highlands, that influential gentlemen who
have been Jacobite in sympathy, and even act, be won over to Our
Settled Sovereignship;
"Therefore it is ordered that they shall, wherever possible, be
installed in the headship of houses and estates kindred to them, which
have been forfeit and estreated, all on strict condition of loyalty to
Ourselves and our Crown for ever;
"And this wisely considered and, in our graciousness of heart, clement
policy, shall, we instruct, apply to John Farquharson of Inverery,
commonly called the Black Colonel, if, and when, he is able to
implement its essence in reference to the Forbes estate of Corgarff in
the far uplands of Aberdeenshire, where we wish to be loyally regarded
by our subjects.
"In token of all which foregoing greetings and intimations on our part,
herewith witness our royal signature.
"GEORGE REX."
"You understand?" said the Black Colonel, as I lifted my eyes from the
document and handed it back to him.
I nodded, mechanically, for I was thinking--thinking chiefly of Marget
and myself.
_VIII.--The Conquering Hero_
It is unbelievable how the sweet face of a lass, or her soft figure,
with its air of passion song, will come between two men and make any
great affairs of state dividing them, seem as nothing by comparison.
The Black Colonel and I would hardly, as individuals, have quarrelled
about Stuart and Guelph, knowing well the value which Stuart and Guelph
would have put on us. But with Marget Forbes as prize it was another
affair altogether, for, in her, a whole bouquet of calling qualities
united.
Her heart, so far, was all in the open joy of living, though in the
troublous times which surrounded her and her family, she found burden
enough of sorrow. She was a flower of the heather, opening late, like
it, but perhaps with the same red, rich bloom, for it was not hard to
divine that elements of high possibility were enclosed in her young
womanhood. It gave you, for all its simplicity, a sense of latent
treasure, when it should fully open, even, it might be of surprise to
herself.
Seventeen! they say, when girlhood is trembling, quivering on the
portal of womanhood, a world of mysteries. But it is not half so
dramatic as twenty-five, when a woman, if she be rightly healthy in
mind and body, comes into woman's estate, feeling, desiring, some
earlier, some later, but roughly then. Peril is there, as well as
beauty, for then all the Margets in the wide world are pulling at the
silky bonds of sex, thinking these will stretch and stretch, only to
find, perhaps, that there is a strain at which they must break or
surrender.
If the insurgency of newly-found womanhood can be fitly employed all is
well, but remember that most women are, in thought, rebels for romance.
Nature, too, runs fullest in the veins of those who live with her
naturally, aloof from the veneer of society. Nature is lusty in
Nature's lap, and she mothered our Corgarff without let or hindrance,
in sun and in snow, Marget Forbes included.
You are to suppose a region far removed even from such a niggard
commerce of life as there was then in the Scottish Highlands. It is
sixty miles from the warming salt-wash of the sea, and has winds nearly
as cold as those that blow from the Arctic. This is because it stands
high, and is so bare of trees that they blow unbroken over its area.
They catch you with their ice tang in them, untouched by long,
sheltering woods, or soft, rolling dales, and they make your face
tingle into red and white, the blushes of Mother Nature.
That is the winter, when the land is often covered with snow, and the
little burns of the hills are frozen into snake-like icicles. If the
picture is hard, it is nevertheless beautiful, looked out upon from the
comfort of good clothes and a full stomach. It invites you to explore
it, to follow that far track ending on the snow-line of Morven, or yon
other, which dips and is lost in the riven sides of Lochnagar. The air
sings through your lungs with the force of strong drink and makes you
hearty. You feel monarch of all you survey, even if it be not worth
having, which is the most stirring feeling a landscape can yield.
Nor would there be much to divide your monarchy; only a chimney,
reeking blue into the grey sky, from a fire of peat, a few sheep, or
some hardly [Transcriber's note: hardy?] cattle turned out in the
height of the day to gather what scraps of food they might, a pair of
wandering red deer at the same hard game of finding a living, or a
hare, grown bluish-white for the winter-time, to resemble the friendly
snow, scampering off before the snap of your foot on the heather. When
the rigour of winter lies upon the land, men and women can do little
but keep their beasts alive, and themselves sit round the fire, passing
the slow time of day with what gossip may be made.
We froze within the old walls of Corgarff Castle, for they were time
and weather worn. Gales had beaten them, snowstorms had driven at
them, and rains had lashed them, until they were corrugated with
furrows and hollows, like the face of an ancient man. It is curious
how age, whether in a face or in a building, takes on the same
milestones of hollow and hillock, to record the march of time and the
dents in a soul.
But come the summer in Corgarff, and the far-flung ranges of hill lose
their white severity and assume the kindlier mantle of sprouting
heather and green grass; the ptarmigan flies back to its heights above
the snow-line, content with the thin picking and the splendid peace
which summer there provides; the red deer no more falls hungrily upon
the lower pastures, with the roaring fight gone out of the stags and
the hinds left bleating to their own company, like so many widowed
women of the wild.
Instead, the thin sheep of the clansmen, each with its owner's brand to
identify it, wander forth to the common grazings, glad that the bloom
of living is on Nature again. That brings a panorama of scenery which
lights the eye and braces the heart and mind, hills which run into
mountains, mountains which run into the skies, all proclaiming the
splendour of God.
Now, I have tried to tell you this, not very well, perhaps, because our
surroundings in life have much to do with our actions, and the two sets
of circumstance must be comprehended together, especially in a sparsely
peopled countryside. You unconsciously take your dispositions from the
atmosphere, and you cannot be certain always where you may either begin
or end. Thus a simple Highland ball which we soldiers organized at
Corgarff Castle, to while away a night, and be a token of friendliness
towards our neighbours, developed a deep import in my true story.
It was natural for me to smooth and sweeten, as far as I could, the
relations between those in formal authority whom I represented, and the
local clan-folk. To that end I organized this dance in the ancient
Castle, and made it known that anybody and everybody would be welcome.
Any misgiving I had about the response, was balanced by my knowledge of
the Highland fondness for dancing. It has been in the Celtic blood
from the beginning of time; and gillie-callum, over the swords, the
throbbing, squeezing, square reel, the sultry Highland Schottische, and
the rest of the figures, will last until the last trump sounds the last
morning.
You dance for the joy of life, if you are born in a land of the sun,
and in a land of cold you dance for the joy which springs from warmth.
It is a primal expression of feeling, and the Scottish Highlanders have
always had beautiful dances, and danced them well; dances with the
music of sex in them, though they might not admit it, or did not know
it. Religion and dancing have often been the only things in their
lives, apart from the common round of fighting and working, when they
cared for work. Thus, my ball, though it might be an affair of the
enemy, had a subtle call to the Highland blood, especially in the women.
My first invitation was to Marget Forbes and her mother, because, if I
could only persuade them to be present everything would be well. Let
the ladies of the ancient great house come, and there was no reason why
the commonalty should stay away. The times had been sorrowful for
mother and daughter, as the black they wore betokened, but, I wrote
gently, "We must let the dead bury their dead, and try and build some
bridge on which the living may meet."
So it was arranged that Marget, the young chieftainess of the Corgarff
Forbeses, with her mother, should open the ball. This news was out a
week before the event, and we soon learned that, as I had thought, we
should have a good muster of guests. I took my soldier men entirely
into my confidence, and they grew keen to make the dance a success,
being kindly fellows and open to softer adventures, as well as the
other kind.
They were collectively to be hosts, and whoever crossed the doorstep on
the night was to be received without prejudice and with all honour.
Everybody should have what we could give to eat and drink, and when
they set home again it would be from a warm welcome and a sincere
good-bye. Ah! if I could only have foreseen one acceptance of that
general invitation to the countryside; but I didn't, and how could I?
Men are not gods in wisdom, and how dull life would be it they were;
how dull especially for their women-folk who, thanks be, are not always
angels, except of light, and even they know how to darken the radiance.
The famous night came, and in good time came also Marget and her
mother, with their small group of servants from the Dower House. Our
largest room, where the dance was to be, a sort of hall of the Castle,
was filling with robust Highlanders in tartans, and with their
women-folk in their best gowns. Personally I felt easy and happy when
I shook Marget's hand, saying, "It is kind of you to help me, and
perhaps between us we are doing good." Then I conducted her and her
mother to seats on a low platform at the further end of the room and
quietly ordered the dance to begin.
A brace of fiddlers, seated in a corner, were scraping their catgut
into tune for the music, while, outside, a piper was playing a Highland
gathering. The Scots bagpipes yield their real melody in the open air,
and only then, and to me, from a little distance, they sounded loud and
rarely that cold star-lit night. The piper's business was this
overture, and presently, when it was completed, he would march in, as
grand as you like, and pipe us the first reel, in which Marget, I had
fondly thought, was to be my partner. Oh, everything was very well
arranged, and nothing happened as had been arranged, which is, perhaps,
the peculiarity of life, when we reflect on it as a perpetual drama.
Presently I heard a slight commotion, as if something had happened
unexpectedly, and then the hoof of a horse stamping the ground. The
sea of heads in the room, pulled by curiosity, bent towards the door,
and I realized that some surprise was approaching.
At that moment the piper, a Forbes man, to whom the honour of playing
had been given, struck up his reel and strode in upon us. He was big,
broad, imposing, with his kilted figure, and he seemed to halt, in
order that we might admire him, for a good piper and a peacock are
vain; but this was merely my fancy. What I saw, immediately following
him, was no fancy but staggering truth; it was the Black Colonel!
Yes, the Black Colonel in full Highland regalia, bowing and nodding to
the people about him, who courtesied back with an easy homage, for they
knew him instantly; the Black Colonel as large as life, eminently
pleased with himself, taking possession of the place and the occasion,
as if he were a conquering hero coming into his own; the Black Colonel,
Jock Farquharson of Inverey, a chief among the men of whom it has been
written that:
"Brak loose and to the hills go they."
If I was stunned, the piper was not, for he walked up the room with a
deliberation which the quick step of his tune did not warrant. Behind
him paced the Black Colonel, and as he came nearer to myself and the
ladies, I saw them turn as if to ask me whether this was in the
programme. So far, the Black Colonel had not let his eyes catch ours.
He gave himself to the crowd, as a well-graced actor gives himself to
the house when it applauds him. He had the music on his side, too,
for, at the platform, the piper stepped aside into a corner, still
blowing hard, and this brought the Black Colonel full to the front,
immediately beside us. Thereupon he slowly bent in salutation to
Marget and her mother, while everybody watched and waited, wondering
what was to happen now.
"Ladies," he said softly, but distinctly, "I hope that if to-night I
have come unbidden by our friend, Captain Gordon, I am not unwelcome to
you, aye, and even to him. We are all kins-folk, and I wished to
manifest a kindly feeling by joining in this meeting. I also desired
to make fuller acquaintance, than has hitherto been possible, with two
kins-women who have suffered hardly in times which, let us hope from
the promise of this gathering, are about to be forgotten. It would
show my boldness forgiven if I might open the ball with Mistress
Marget, for Captain Gordon, as host, will wish to conduct her mother."
Again the Black Colonel bowed, as if he were master of the situation,
which, in fact, he fully appeared to be. Confident and gracious, he
offered Marget his arm, and she took it mechanically, such being the
force of suggestion, exercised by a strong man's mind, especially with
many eyes looking on. Mechanically, also, I held out my arm to
Marget's mother and, while our small world still wondered, I found
myself in a foursome reel with the Black Colonel. But he was Marget's
partner!
He talked merrily to her when the drowning music would let him, even
though she scarcely replied, being still in the custody of his
surprise. He was out to please, and he undoubtedly was handsome, or,
at all events, striking in his tartans, and he danced perfectly. Why
deny it, even if it had not been patent to every onlooking, wondering
eye? He made a mightily fine picture, and he knew it, though he did
not spoil the picture by showing he knew it.
Marget was in a simple black gown with a ruffle of white French lace at
her neck and a flush in her cheeks. Her black hair was twined
naturally about her head, which she carried high, so I told myself, as
if in defiance of the Black Colonel, while she had to be his partner
and prisoner. She glanced at me once or twice with an amused twinkle
in her eye, thinking, I suppose, of her bold capture from the host of
the evening, my unlucky self. Some women are a blessing, others keep
you guessing, somebody will say, and Marget, I judged, even in the
whirl of that reel, could be both, if she cared to try.
Quicker time the music made it, many a foot keeping stroke, and quicker
time we had to make it. You know the romp of a Highland reel at the
double, how it causes the blood to sing in the veins and the feet to
jig. Marget's mother had been a fine dancer, but, as she whispered to
me, she was no longer young. Marget herself had inherited all her
mother's ease and grace of carriage, and she had her own spirit and go.
The music and the motion caught her into forgetfulness of everything
else, and she danced with a grace and a swing which were bewitching.
She had, again I was bound to admit, a complete dancing partner in the
Black Colonel, a fellow of natural and acquired accomplishments. He
had his clean ankles and elegant uprightness from his Highland
forbears, and he had got his polish of deportment when he was among the
English Jacobites in France. The result was that he danced all of a
piece, with as near the poetry of movement as a man might attain, and
then there was the intimate, intriguing ripple of his tartans.
Myself, I was quite a good dancer, but, if I may be my own apologist,
not so showy a dancer as the Black Colonel. While I could hold my own
with most men in the Highland dances, probably surpass many, I could
not fill a dancing floor as he did, with his natural air of drama. A
woman who herself dances well, sighs for a fit partner, but give her in
that partner a personality drawing a general homage to them both, and
she is twice blessed. After all, she is a woman, with the woman's
prayer for attention, for being, once in a way, the centre of a
picture, as she is on her wedding day, the Day of Promise, whatever
follows.
An early episode in the life of the Black Colonel had associated him
with the rollicking "Reel O'Tulloch," a dance originated in Strathdee.
His people had gone to church, so went the tale, but, the weather being
wintry, no parson arrived. Seeking warmth, they began to blow on their
hands, then to shuffle with their feet on the floor, and presently,
when somebody fetched a fiddler, this broke into a reel. A bottle with
inspiration in it was brought from the change-house near by, and faster
went the music and faster grew the fun.
When young Jock Farquharson, hearing of this, came on the scene, the
"Reel O'Tulloch" was being danced "ower the kirk and ower the kirk,"
and voices cried:
"John, come kiss me now,
John, come kiss me now,
John, come kiss me by and by
And mak' nae mair adow."
One of the guests at our later, different dance, in Corgarff Castle,
must have remembered this, for suddenly there was a sort of "soughing"
of the song, then a singing of it, and it was positively roared out by
the assembly when the music stopped and the dance ended. I understood
the application and the invitation which were intended, and I caught a
look in Marget's flushed face, as if she also understood. Her mother
glanced at the roystering singers, then at the Black Colonel and, with
an apology for leaving me, went and stood beside her daughter, the
mothering instinct of protection called into action.
"Thank you, Mistress Marget," I heard Jock Farquharson say, in his most
melodious tone, "you have been kind to me, and I will hope to thank you
again. And thank you, Madame," he said, bowing low to her mother, "for
letting me lift my head to-night, as it has not been lifted for long.
I shall not forget to be grateful and, I hope, to deserve your
good-will."
Then he made me, the official host, a last, low bow with a mockery,
subtle but noticeable, in it, walked down the room, saluting and being
saluted on every side, and was gone. Our friendly ball, from which I
had expected so much, died away to the clink of Mack's galloping hoofs,
an unsettling rhythm.
_IX.--'Twixt Night and Morn_
They declare that if you are drowning, or otherwise at the crack o'
doom, your whole life's record leaps through your mind in an instant.
It may be so, Providence giving a man, however his balance-sheet
stands, a last chance to square it fair and well.
Everybody being gone home, and I being alone, after our dizzy ball, I
felt that I had to count up the position. It needed no effort to
understand that the Black Colonel's purpose in invading me had been to
meet Marget and her mother, to impress himself upon them, all in the
interest of his designs. He had relied for safety upon the temporary
state of neutrality which the ball carried with it, and he had come, he
had seen, he had--what? So far my thoughts convoyed me. But my little
room in the castle with its cell-like windows, its low ceiling, even, I
would add, its sense of plain refinement, worried me, and I went out
into the night and the spaciousness of earth and heaven. Oh, for
freedom to breathe and think, and oh for it at that witching time when
night and day hold their bridal of mating among the Highland hills.
It was the hour, in our altitudes, at which night sleeps her heaviest,
as if to snatch the last wink from the breaking morn. Nature was
superbly at rest, sloughing the worn trappings of yesterday, preparing
the shining armour of the morrow. It was the hour of creation, the
wonder-coming of a child into the world, magnified beyond imagining, a
tender life, very, very beautiful. It cried to my soul, seeking the
humblest companionship for its own great soul, playing upon mine with a
touch of incomparable delicacy.
And yet, yet, the chief feeling was almost that of a paganism, of an
earth-smell and an earth-worship, of a giant awakening from torpor,
ravenous with hunger. It was all the grand savagery, the terrible
strength of Mother Earth, the Great Protector, from whose loins I had
sprung, but who is unspeakably awesome until you see her face in the
rising sun. Then the nightmare of the darkness which empalls her with
a cold sense of death, turns into a radiance as of gold and kindness.
Ah! it was worth while to be abroad among the heather and the fir-trees
at dawn, for the virgin world, the pagan, freed from cerements and
found in the twilight to be a god, was all my own, mine to enjoy. I
think I know why primitive man, when he lived in lands where Nature was
wild and the nights were long, was a resolute pagan. No light, no
warmth of its torch, had he to set the fire of reverence in him
burning, and reverence is the footstool of belief in God. I think I
also know why the other primitive man of the south, dwelling in a land
of the sun, would be a sun-worshipper: because it gave him reverence
and drew it from him.
We fear endless things when it is dark, the stoutest-hearted of us,
but, in the geniality of a shining sun, we have courage. The picture,
in ancient Greek legend, of husband and wife, one of them about to die,
taking a long farewell as the dipping sun-rays gilt Olympus at its
highest peaks, has often seemed to me a fine linking of the night of
paganism and the morn of sunlit faith.
Odd thoughts to run in a man's head as he walked the dew-damp heather,
careless which track he took, conscious only that he sought a new
morning. But you do think strange thoughts if you have in you any of
the dreamy Celt and have been born and nurtured in the cradle of the
hills. They infect you, I will not say with second sight, though there
have been proved instances, but with their own moods, like a
soft-falling foot, which, in our spiritual pilgrimage, is the Foot of
Fate.